Thursday, October 1, 2009

The most profitable month yet, as I hope every continuing month would be... As usual, this month featured a downswing early in the month, but not nearly as drastic as prior months. To start, I was down ~$200 (for the stakes I was playing, ~10 buy ins!). I recaptured that by mid-month and went on a tear (you can totally see that in the graph between hands 10856 & 15866) leading to the opening of my career at $50NL/PL solely. After tearing up that game for a little while, things settled down and, I was plus/minus 5 buy ins. It is great to be profitable at the next level, but I have very limited hands to show for it (~11K @ $50NL/PL). I started 5 tabling, with the intent of working my way up to 6 tables. Since moving to 5 tables, I've done well, and been less susceptible to over-thinking / neurotic decisions (a form of tilt for me, where I am sure that everyone is bluffing me). Let's hope October has a steady course and I continue to show good profits...

A quick rundown of my stats: 24K hands played in 98 hours for a win rate of 4.77 BB/100 (PT3 BBs) - my dollar / hour average kicked last month's average's butt by double @ $9.52/hr. I am going to start posting my Iron Man status as well; this month I made silver, but check out the last day (30th)! 545 points is more than I have ever done in a single day! It was a 5 hour session last night.

Note: I started adding in the sources of my profits, where in prior months I only tracked my online poker playing profits. I went through my last 2 monthly recaps and added this section to each of the posts.

Quick commentary: I started 5 tabling the other day... I was in the midst of a -$120+ session and I said to myself I need to stop messing around with 2 or 3 tables and increase my hands seen... I opened up 5 total tables and started playing "normally" for me, which is not worrying about the trivial details, avoiding tough decisions every hand, etc. I started avoiding OOP situations (because I'm seeing more hands, having less time to worry about marginal situations), started getting busy between hands on other tables, and was able to focus fully. From the low of $-120 for that night, I turned it around to $47! I think that's the key - I need to start increasing my tables to keep my focus.

It also helped that I started getting decent hands... but that's neither here nor there. I was able to start playing the cards & waiting for the cards instead of pressing marginal situations.

I think the above is fundamental to all online poker players; there are too many available distractions when you're in your home on your computer. If you give yourself the optimal balance, you won't have time to watch TV, play solitaire, read blog posts on the internet, and any host of other bad habits I've been doing lately while waiting in between hands with 2-3 tables.

Update: The last day of the month, September 30... I figured I'd give 6 tabling a try. I was busy, and made some marginal decisions, but it went well! I can see 6 tabling in my future.